


In The End (I'll Miss You My Friend)

by orphan_account



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Kidnapping, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You will give us the money you promised, or the price will be paid in his blood.” The man growled, low and threatening.</p><p>Or: Eduardo Saverin isn't the type of guy who just sits back and lets himself be a bartering tool for Russian thugs.<br/>Things devolve from there and for once it's Eduardo's mouth that gets him into trouble.</p><p>There are also a lot of feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The End (I'll Miss You My Friend)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: kidnapping, semi-graphic violence.

/  
They got him on his way back from the office. 

It was a humid, muggy night in Singapore. More so than usual and even though he only lived a couple of blocks away from the office, Eduardo was going to pass out from a combination of too many late nights, early mornings and the smothering embrace of Singapore if he didn’t get a taxi soon. 

Settling against a street lamp and closing his eyes to the oppressive brightness of the city, he waved a hand out, blindly flagging down one of the many passing yellow cabs. Through the thin membrane of his eyelids, Eduardo saw the lights shift and he cracked his eyes open enough to take in the familiar sight of a Singapore cab before popping the rear door and sliding inside. 

The cab pulled up at his apartment building and Eduardo thanked the driver in broken Malay before thrusting what was probably way too much money for a two minute fare into his hands and climbing out again.

His apartment complex was a ghost town at 3am, even in Singapore, and they were waiting for him in the shadowy confines of the alley bordering his building when he stepped away from the curb. By the time his foggy brain caught up to what was happening, they had his arms behind his back and were throwing his briefcase into the trash. 

Eduardo struggled and kicked, even got a good punch in when the guy at his back slackened his hold a bit too much, but it wasn’t much of a fight. There were four of them and Eduardo was never really much of a fighter. He’d never had to be before. 

The tallest one, who looked a little like George Clooney and a lot like Scarface, punched him in the stomach and shoved a bag over his head while he was doubled over wheezing. Someone must have knocked him out because the next thing he knew, he was in a dark warehouse, bound to a chair like he was in a fucking Mafia movie. 

They’d gagged him too of course, which made absolutely no sense. Who was he going to talk to, the fucking rats?

Days passed and nothing happened, no call for ransom, no ultimatum, no contact whatsoever from whoever was holding him. He had no human interaction except for Scarface who came in once a day to make him eat, drink and hold his junk while he pissed into a bucket. Or sometimes shit into a bucket when his bowls managed to work with, rather than against the meagre water rations and fibreless sludge they were feeding him. 

It was humiliating, violating and demeaning- and every time Scarface pulled down his pants and left him gagged and powerless, Eduardo had to stop himself from choking on his own panic.

Eduardo was never allowed to ask questions. And after the first time he tried and was summarily beaten until everything ached and he bruised like an over-ripe peach, he didn’t dare try again. And even though nothing truly terrible had happened to him physically, and he knew they could be doing a lot worse, Eduardo was going slowly insane from the isolation and the oppressive dark. Days spent in dark and silence made every hour, every minute, every second itch under his skin- a constant reminder of the panic-inducing gravity of his situation. 

Eduardo barely felt like a person anymore.

He could only count the days because he knew Scarface came once a day to feed and humiliate him via shit-bucket. And by the time his back was seizing constantly and every muscle ached from being hunched and bound in the same position, he’d counted eight days. 

Eight days, eight visits from Scarface, and Eduardo was beginning to believe they didn’t want anything from him except his pain and suffering. Maybe there was no end game here except his end. Literally. 

As the hours passed in silence and pain, Eduardo began to think that maybe death was the best outcome he could hope for. At least it would be over then, the pointless, thankless waiting that stripped every iota of spirit from his body and made resistance utterly laughable. Eduardo couldn’t resist what hadn’t happened, after all. 

Besides, if the police knew how to find him they’d have done it already. And if there’d been a ransom, his father would have paid it and he’d be out of here by now.

They’d all heard the spiel when they were younger: all the rich kids with important fathers and kidnapping-insurance. If you or your family were gone more than a week, you were as good as dead in the eyes of the law. And there was no point sparing man-power to go after a dead man. 

Eduardo hung his head and moaned through his saliva-sodden gag when his neck muscles screamed in protest. He didn’t care anymore. He’d spent over a week in the dark and he could barely feel his own body anymore and when he could, it was in nothing but pain.

Eduardo closed his eyes and prayed, prayed for the sleep that he knew wouldn’t come.

After a while he passed out.

//

When Eduardo woke up it was to a rough hand in his hair yanking his head back and baring his neck. Eduardo blinked blearily up at the ceiling and didn’t bother to make a sound. He was too tired to move, too tired to resist, too tired to care. 

Whoever was talking was speaking Russian and they didn’t sound happy. The hand in his hair tightened and pulled his scalp taught. Eduardo relaxed into the movement and breathed long, deep breaths, closing his eyes against the pain and the situation- focusing in on nothing and everything at once. Eventually, the pain lessened and his senses sharped once more.

As his concentration returned, Eduardo became aware of the other people in the room, the other voices. They were all speaking Russian and though Eduardo was fairly adept at the language, he was unable to concentrate through the pain well enough to translate what they were saying. 

The guy at his side with his hand in Eduardo’s hair stunk of liquor and was obviously a native speaker, as were at least two other voices, but there were one or two that sounded odd. They were fluent, but lacked the distinct dialect that marked the native speaker. 

Before Eduardo had the opportunity to ponder the implications of that, the hand holding his hair let go and as Eduardo’s chin dropped towards his chest, reached out and smacked him hard across the face three times in rapid succession.

_Slap! Slap! Slap!_

The final slap echoed in the air with a resounding crack and there was a shocked gasp from afar and a moment of crushing silence, followed by a low garbled threat from the man beside Eduardo, that he was able to decipher this time due to the large surge of adrenalin pumping through his veins courtesy of the pain in his cheeks and jaw.

“You will give us the money you promised, or the price will be paid in his blood.”

Eduardo swallowed and managed to turn his head from where it had been hanging against his shoulder. Blinking the dimness out of his eyes, Eduardo managed to lock eyes with the man towering over him in a moment of shocked stillness and realised for the first time that his gag was gone. 

Licking his cracked lips with what little saliva he had left as dehydrated as he was, Eduardo just looked at the man: took in his stained shirt, overgrown facial hair, pot belly and completely ignored his shiny looking knife in favour of laughing at him- loudly and hysterically. It was the first time Eduardo had felt genuinely insane the entire time. 

The man startled briefly, shocked and affronted, before the hand was back in Eduardo’s hair, yanking his still laughing head back harshly, and baring his neck. He leant close, his foul-smelling breath hitting Eduardo right in the nose and making him gag. Still Eduardo couldn’t stop laughing. 

Voices murmured around him, but he didn’t pay them any attention, preoccupied with the wet sounds of his own laughter and the absurdity of the situation he was in. 

Eduardo Saverin-- kidnapped by Russian thugs. 

Seriously? Wasn’t this a Bruce Willis movie?

Eduardo laughed harder.

“What’s so funny?” The man growled, twisting the hand in his hair. 

The still sane corner of Eduardo’s brain was screaming at him to shut the fuck up and not say anything stupid. The majority of him however, was tormented, in pain and definitely out of it’s mind. 

Eduardo was also, to his surprise, becoming very, very angry. 

Laptop smashing angry.

“You won’t win” he croaked in accented Russian, his laughter trailing off, becoming cold and quiet. The man blinked at Eduardo in surprise before leaning close and sneering into his face.

“And what would you know little lamb?” The man ran the blunt edge of his knife across the line of Eduardo’s throat, turning it at the last minute to press down and make a shallow cut at the fragile skin of his jaw. A small river of red ran down Eduardo’s neck and pooled at his collar. “You are meat at the slaughtering table and I hold the knife.”

The man grinned cruelly, reared back without warning and spat in his face. 

And that was it- Eduardo snapped.

Eduardo smiled: a small, humourless thing and didn’t break the man’s gaze. If he was going down, he was taking this pitiless fuck with him.

“I’m only one person, not even an important person really, and I might not be the one that makes you pay, but you will pay. People like you always do.” Eduardo said and the man grabbed him by the collar and yanked him forward so his chair scraped across the floor and the knife cut deeper into Eduardo’s flesh, making him hiss.

“Bite your fucking tongue you whore or I’ll cut it out!” The man growled, threatening and vile.

The people around him started yelling and there was a brief scuffle, a shout of his name which Eduardo ignored, trapped in the blistering fury of the man’s eyes. Eduardo smiled again and it was full of cruel, mocking promise.

“Someday you will pay for all the horrible things you’ve done and when that day comes and you’re down on your knees begging for your life to be spared or maybe just your freedom, I want you to remember this.” Eduardo continued, voice deadly calm and serious- an odd counterpoint to his shaking, battered body. 

The knife pressed harder and Eduardo felt it slip past another layer of skin. Someone screamed at him and Eduardo vaguely recognised the voice, even in Russian. 

“Shut up!” The man roared, spittle flying into his face. Eduardo sneered, his anger an all-consuming, destructive force.

“I want you to remember that whoever loved you in this life will never love you again. That even when you’ve been _surrounded_ by people, you’ve never been anything but alone and miserable your entire pathetic life.”

“Fucking slut, whore! Shut your lying mouth you cunt!”

Eduardo smiled brutally, split his lip and tasted blood. 

“But most of all” he whispered, harsh and low in the resounding, sudden silence, “I want you to remember that your time on this earth amounted to nothing and no one will miss you. I want you to know that you are not worth missing.” Eduardo snapped and there were tears beading behind his eyes- a combination of pain and anger. 

“That you did it to yourself, you _godless fuck_.” 

For a moment no one breathed and Eduardo panted harshly into the silence. His eyes blazed with some psychotic challenge and to his part-horror, part-relief, part-triumph, the man roared, changed the grip on his knife and stabbed the blade straight into Eduardo’s throat.

Eduardo choked.

Someone screamed: a horrified, ear-splitting sound and then there was yelling and the sound of gunshots echoing in the warehouse. All Eduardo could see was red.

In the resulting fray, the man was shot twice in the gut and fell gracelessly to the floor at Eduardo’s feet. There was blood rising in Eduardo’s throat and he could barely breathe, but he managed a small, gurgling laugh for the man, looked him straight in the eye again and spat in his face.

The man died like that, with Eduardo’s final ‘fuck you’ splattered in spit and blood on his face. He’d never seen a man die before. Eduardo smiled red regardless and tried not to choke on his own blood.

His vision was starting to blur again and his breathes were getting worryingly shallow by the time Eduardo felt the ropes around him slacken and give under the pressure of grasping hands. Sound rushed in and out of his ears like the crashing of ocean waves, but he was partly aware of a hysterical voice in his ear and a kind hand around his throat, trying to stem the blood flow. 

Someone laid him down on the cold concrete and Eduardo hissed wetly when his muscles screamed at the movement before relaxing as blood started to return to his limbs. What little blood he had anyway. What a way to die, he thought numbly, facing off with an alcoholic Russian thug. Al Pacino eat your heart out.

There were hands on his face, he realised, and someone was speaking into his ear, sobbing. Someone was sobbing in his ear, crying into his hair. Someone was holding him while he died. Eduardo smiled. That’s nice of them, he thought, and allowed himself to drift. 

Finally, he was safe.

_“Wardo!”_

The scream paralysed him. 

Eduardo’s eyes snapped open and all sensation came rushing back. 

Fuck he knew that voice.

Eduardo gasped, or tried to. He ended up hacking instead and looked up straight into the streaming, anguished eyes of Mark Zuckerberg. Eduardo gasped for breath he could barely find and Mark continued to cry. He rubbed a hand over Eduardo’s face and thumbed under his eyes.

“Oh Wardo, I’m so fucking sorry” he whispered.

And oh fuck, Eduardo realised, not only was Mark somehow really fucking here with him, watching him die- they were having a god damn death bed confessional. How was this his life? Was he actually on Hollyoaks?

Eduardo choked out a wet laugh and Mark frowned at him, looking uncertain. “Are you… _laughing_ at me?”

Eduardo grinned. “My life is a fucking soap opera in the middle of a Bruce Willis movie. Al Pacino is so jealous Mark, you have _no_ idea!” He wheezed, slightly hysterical and a lot delirious all of a sudden. He felt very light, like he could float up towards the ceiling and touch the sky if he wanted to.

Mark’s face did something complicated and after a moment his expression turned panicked and he grabbed Eduardo’s face in his hands-hard and unyielding.

“No.” He said firmly, an audible tremor in his voice. “Stop it. You need to stay with me now.”

“What?” Eduardo croaked, still grinning. His eyes caught the speckled light on the ceiling and Eduardo smiled up at it, eyes drooping, and made plans to catch it in his hands when he floated up to heaven and keep it always. It was such pretty light.

He told Mark as much and his only response was to make that desperate face again, shake him by the lapels and, in a moment of desperation, slap him hard across the face.

Mark’s eyes bore into his and Eduardo was wrenched out of his delirium again with a shocked little gasp. “You need to stay with me Wardo” Mark whispered urgently, leaning close. “Stay awake for me.” He pleaded and there was such naked emotion in those words that Eduardo couldn’t do anything but nod and fight not to lose his breath.

But Eduardo was so tired, so sore and so, so confused. What was Mark doing here? Why was he being so nice? When did he start to care about Eduardo anyway?

Eduardo must have been saying some of these things out loud because Mark was crying again and pulling Eduardo’s head into his lap. Then he was shifting Eduardo bodily back against his chest and wrapping his arms around him tightly, carefully avoiding the knife hilt still protruding grotesquely from his neck. Eduardo’s body didn’t protest and he could barely feel the arms around him, but he leant back anyway and let Mark hold him, let him keep him. If only for a little while longer.

Mark buried his face into the side of Eduardo’s neck that wasn’t red and held his hand against the sluggishly bleeding wound on the other. He gasped into Eduardo’s neck and raised his head a bit to whisper in his ear. “I don’t have time to explain it all” he croaked and Eduardo’s eyes filled with tears at the sound of his voice, so fragile, so close and the feel of Mark all around him. “But I need you to know that I have always cared. Even when it seemed like I didn’t. I never stopped caring for you. _Never_.”

Eduardo’s eyes fluttered and his face crumpled in despair. God, he was really dying wasn’t he? 

Eduardo turned his face as much as he could and focused on the warm pants of Mark’s breath on his neck. He rested his forehead against Mark’s temple and kissed his cheekbone carefully, listening to his breath hitch.

“I know” Eduardo whispered and opened his eyes to watch Mark turn and face him. 

“Chris will be back soon.” Mark whispered urgently and Eduardo realised the other voice before must have been Chris’. “You need to hold on until the ambulance gets here.”

Eduardo didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. They weren’t going to make it. He had minutes, if he was lucky. Mark clung to him tighter, like he knew.

“Just try.” Mark whispered and Eduardo could vaguely feel the sweep of his wet eyelashes against his neck. “Please just try to hold on.”

Eduardo gathered what was left of his strength to raise his arm and grab hold of the tight clutch of Mark’s hands over his heart. 

“You need to listen to me.” Eduardo whispered and Mark shook his head frantically against his neck.

“Don’t speak. Save your energy.” Mark ordered, voice cracking. “Please.”

Eduardo licked his broken lips with no success. He was completely dry. He had to do this now then.

“You need to listen. The fallout, with Facebook. Wasn’t your fault.”

Mark went stock-still behind him and Eduardo went on.

“I was jealous. Jealous and scared you were moving on and leaving me behind. I was reacting like a scared friend, not a business partner and you were right to do what you did. You were right and I’m sorry.” Eduardo whispered, feeling the burden lift off his shoulders like a literal weight. He finally said it then. Finally.

Mark’s expression crumpled into his neck and Eduardo turned his face toward him. “No Wardo, _no_. Stop it. I was the one- _I was the one who_ -” Mark started, voice choked, eyes miserable and repentant.

Eduardo cut him off and finally said what needed to be said all those years ago in the middle of the pouring rain and crowding anger. 

“I’m so sorry I didn’t come when you asked that day.” There was no need for Eduardo to specify, from the hitched breath and shaking hands, Mark knew. “You needed me and I wasn’t there for you. I couldn’t see. I’m sorry for that. I’m most sorry for that, out of everything.”

“Wardo.” Mark sobbed and clenched a hand in his hair. Not rough like the man had, but soft and claiming, like Mark wanted to hold him to his body forever and never let go. “Please. _Please_.”

Mark was begging, crying into his shoulder and Eduardo didn’t know what to do, just held on and fought not to close his eyes as drowsiness tried to pull him under. 

“You can’t do this to me.” Mark wailed, clenching sporadically at his shirt. “You can’t say all that and leave me here alone.”

Mark’s voice was heartbreaking and Eduardo wished with all the beats of his heart that things had been different. 

“You can’t leave me alone Wardo, you can’t.” Mark held him impossibly tighter and all Eduardo felt was cold. “I just got you back.” He whispered.

Eduardo’s eyes fluttered and he fought to look at Mark. He was cold now and very tired, more tired than he’d ever been. It would be so easy to close his eyes and drift away. So easy. 

Mark was curved around Eduardo like a protective shield, his shoulders bracketing him in, his hands clenched in Eduardo’s grip. Eduardo smiled despite himself, despite the cold, despite the pain, despite everything.

“Aren’t we a couple of idiots.” Eduardo murmured, glass in his throat. He gurgled a bit. It hurt to speak, but he did it anyway. “Waiting until now to do this.”

Mark smiled and made a sound that was part laugh, part sob. “Yeah.” He agreed. “The biggest.”

“There’s something else too.” Eduardo whispered and caught Mark’s eye, raising a shaking hand to Marks face and tracing the edge of his jaw, cupping the delicate hinge. 

“I love you.” Eduardo said and watched Mark’s eyes go wide and shocked. “I loved you back then, before facebook, before everything, and I still love you now.”

Eduardo’s eyes went hooded with fatigue and emotion, voice breaking into a thousand splintering shards of love and regret. “I’ll Love you always.” He whispered.

Mark made a sound like he was dying and grabbed Eduardo’s face. “Wardo.” He breathed: awed, reverent, scared. “ _Wardo_.”

Eduardo smiled and with what strength was left in him, tipped his head forward to rest his forehead against Marks. “Always.” He promised and, finally, felt his body give in.

Eduardo made wet sounds on every breath he took and a moment later, he couldn’t pull air into his lungs anymore. Eduardo was too tired to try, he was so, so tired. It was done.

Eduardo sagged in Mark’s hold and Mark cried out at once. 

“Wardo?” He said, urgent and scared. “Wardo!”

Mark tried to do something to the wound on his neck, slow the blood flow maybe, but it wasn’t working. Eduardo wasn’t bleeding anymore. His heart wasn’t beating. His eyes were closed and Mark Zuckerberg held Eduardo Saverin to his chest and screamed for all the world to hear.

Then there were sirens.

///

Light.

Brilliant white light all around him, drowning out every shadow and filling all the places inside he hadn’t known were empty. Every pain was healed; every hurt abolished like it never existed. 

Eduardo drifted into the light and forgot, forgot everything that weighed him down to the Earth. Everything that made him heavy and immovable as the Earth and stone he had once belonged to: ten, a hundred, a thousand years ago.

Eons passed, ages, and Eduardo lived without pain, completely content for an endless stretch of a thousand lifetimes.

Then it was gone.

////  
Eduardo woke a number of times before he woke up. There were brief snatches of time, blinks of awareness that were mostly lost in the foggy haze of morphine and exhaustion.

Once he swore he saw Chris and Dustin standing over the foot of his bed, Dustin sobbing quietly into his hands and clinging to Chris’ arm while he looked on, face devastated, but that could’ve just been the morphine. After all, he’d thought he’d seen his father standing over his bed too and they hadn’t spoken in five years, and not on Eduardo’s insistence either. 

When Eduardo woke up for real, the first thing he became aware of was the acrid stench of hospital and clean bandages under his nose. Eduardo looked down and saw the gauze swathed around his neck. Ah, that’s right, he remembered and as his eyes adjusted to the harsh light, he was startled to realise that this was the first time he’d seen a lit room, or light at all in over a week. It felt good, he decided and looked around.

The hospital room was blank white and trying desperately to be cheerful with it’s swirling colourful paintings and perky potted plants by the open window. Eduardo decided he liked it. Someone had left him peonies by his bedside table too, he noted with a smile. His favourites. 

The breeze tussled his hair gently and Eduardo sighed, tilting his head back into the pillows as far as he could get away with without aggravating his wound. 

“You’re awake.” Said a quiet voice from the doorway and Eduardo didn’t need to open his eyes to see who it was.

“Yeah.” Eduardo agreed and his voice sounded rough coming out, but it didn’t hurt like before. The morphine’s doing, he suspected. 

A moment later there was a careful hand in his hair, stroking, and Eduardo smiled wider, still not opening his eyes. He made a low, pleased sound and the arm stiffened.

After a few moments of tense silence, Eduardo opened his eyes and looked up.

Mark looked clean, but tired. His hair was a little wet, his clothes fresh and Eduardo guessed he’d recently gone home to take a shower and clean up a bit- hurriedly, if the patch of stubble on his jaw was anything to go by. 

Eduardo reached up and ran his thumb over the stubborn patch of hair. “Chris?” He asked.

Mark shook his head stiffly, his eyes veiled. “Dustin.” He corrected and his voice was almost as bad as Eduardo’s now, wrecked with pent up emotion and grief.

“Mark.” Eduardo began.

“Don’t.” Mark said quietly, his hand gently resuming it’s ministrations, part peace-offering, part plea. “Please just… Please.”

Eduardo nodded and didn’t comment on the way Mark’s voice broke on the last word.

They sat in silence for long minutes: Mark massaging Eduardo’s scalp, combing back his hair, and Eduardo relaxed and silent under his hands.

Eduardo was so relaxed he was beginning to nod off when Mark spoke up again.

“They warned me.” Mark spoke quietly, his hand never faltering in it’s soothing motion across the sensitive skin of Eduardo’s scalp, nails scratching lightly. Eduardo paused and looked at Mark.

There was no question whom he was talking about.

“They wanted to invest in a new initiative. I told them yes before I got the okay from legal. They had money, they had connections and they were enthusiastic. I didn’t see a reason not to…” Marks face turned stormy, his focus turning inward. “I didn’t see.”

Eduardo frowned and opened his mouth to argue, before thinking better of it and shutting his mouth with a clack. Mark’s hands were shaking, his eyes filled with self-directed loathing. He obviously needed to get this out. It wouldn’t do to interrupt now.

Eduardo kept his face passive and open when Mark looked at him, eyes searching. Let Mark see what he needed to see in him, he thought. Mark held his eyes and looked away quickly, a muscle jumping in his jaw. 

“Legal did a background check on their front-man, Ishcanov, and found connections that were… dubious at best and reputation-ruining at worst.” Mark went on, his lip curled into a cruel sneer. “You met him.” His hand clenched. “Guy with the knife and the dirty mouth.”

Eduardo swallowed and pushed back the memory of spit in his eyes and a knife at his neck, drawing blood. 

“Obviously the deal couldn’t go through and when I told them such, Ishcanov threatened me, saying he’d get what he was owed if he had to take it by force.” Mark said dully and finally looked down at Eduardo.

His eyes turned beseeching. “But I had no idea.” Mark breathed. “No idea they meant to hurt you.”

“I thought they wanted money. Not you.” His voice broke again and Eduardo’s heart clenched in sympathy. “Never you.”

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” Mark said through gathering tears, voice laced with emotion and heaped with self-hatred. “But I’m so sorry Wardo.”

Without even thinking about it, Eduardo reached up and took Mark’s face in his hands and smiled at him, small and trembling as it was. “You couldn’t have known.” He said and gripped Mark’s face harder when it looked like he was going to argue. “You couldn’t have. But I accept your apology anyway.” Eduardo said quietly, thumbing across Mark’s cheek. 

Mark’s eyes were wide with disbelief and something that might have been wonder. “But I got you stabbed and almost killed.” He murmured softly, mouth hesitating over the last word noticeably, turning it into a choking exhale. 

Eduardo shrugged, playing off the vivid flashes of blood and pain in his mind with a carelessness reserved only for Mark Zuckerberg. “Yeah, but I would’ve gotten myself there someday anyway.” Eduardo sent him a lopsided smile. “You just kind of sped up the process a bit.”

Mark managed a small smile and a laugh at that, weak though they were and kept looking at Eduardo like he was a piece of particularly brilliant code: intensely focused, awed and wondering.

“Every time I think I have you pegged, you say something that surprises me and makes me re-evaluate everything I think I know about you. “ Mark admitted, tilting his head, hand stilling in Eduardo’s hair and cradling the back of his head carefully. “How do you do that?”

Eduardo shrugged and tried not to look too surprised and flustered in the face of Mark’s revealing attentions. “Years of practice.” He tried and was gratified when Mark tilted his head and smiled again, looking a little but more genuine this time.

There was a long pause where Mark looked to be summoning the courage to open his mouth. Eduardo smiled.

“What is it?” He asked.

Mark swallowed and Eduardo followed the motion of it with his thumb, moving his hand down Mark’s neck, until it was stilled by his own. Mark’s fingers curled around his and held them to his chest. Their eyes met and held. Eduardo waited.

“You said you loved me.”

Eduardo didn’t dare breathe. “Yes.”

Mark swallowed again and Eduardo could feel his heart hammering under their joined palms. 

Mark licked his lips, an old nervous tell that Eduardo hadn’t seen in years. He leaned forward, slowly, carefully. The hand cradling Eduardo’s scalp tilted his head slightly upwards and utterly forced the breath from his lungs. 

When their faces were close enough, so close, in fact, that they were passing the same breath between them, Mark stilled. The moment held, fragile and silent in the space between breaths.

“I love you too.” Mark admitted, eyes turning misty, swallowing. “Always.”

And Eduardo burst into tears. 

Mark kissed him anyway.

It was unrefined, sloppy and kind of wet from all the crying, but it was the best kiss Eduardo ever shared. Mark kissed Eduardo like he was savouring the flavour of him, the feel of his raw lips, the sound of their mingled gasps. He gave everything to Eduardo, everything he had to give and took from him in equal measure, devouring Eduardo like he’d been waiting years to do so. Maybe he had. It was desperate, but unhurried, heated, but innocent. It was perfect.

Their mouths met over and over again until Eduardo’s still cracked lips started to hurt through the pain killers and he knew they had to stop.

Eduardo pressed his hand to Marks chest and pushed lightly. Mark pulled back reluctantly, blinking the daze from his eyes. His eyes went immediately to Eduardo’s lips and Eduardo knew they must be raw and ravaged by then, but couldn’t bring himself to care much when Eduardo licked and tasted copper. Not blood, but broken skin. 

Mark ran two fingers over Eduardo’s lips, gentle as a butterfly’s caress and Eduardo shuddered. 

“Beautiful.” He breathed and Eduardo quaked, exhaled a shuddering breath and closed his eyes.

“You’re beautiful Wardo.”

Mark’s hand skimmed over the angles of his face, over his jaw and settled lightly on the bandage at his neck. 

“I’m sorry.” He said again, like he couldn’t help himself and Eduardo huffed out an amused breath. Ignoring Mark’s yelp of surprise, Eduardo yanked on his arm and pulled forcefully until Mark was lying beside him in bed, tucked into his side, nose buried in the uninjured side of his neck. 

Eduardo closed his eyes and breathed Mark in, happier and more content than he’d been in a very long time. “Shut up Mark.”

And miracle of miracles, for once in his life, Mark Zuckerberg did indeed shut up.

/////

Chris and Dustin found them like that an hour later, fast asleep, Mark nosing into Eduardo’s neck and Eduardo’s arm wrapped around him tightly. Neither of them mentioned the way Marks hands clasped Eduardo’s hospital gown in a death grip, possessive and desperate, but the look that passed between them said it all really.

Chris propped his hip against the door frame and smiled softly at his friends. He caught Dustin’s eye and found the mirrored sheen of tears in his eyes. 

Dustin sniffed and wiped surreptitiously at his damp eyes. 

“About time.” He said, choked, and Chris could only smile wider and look back at Mark and Wardo, heads bowed together, tangled close enough to sink into each other’s skin and become one.

“Yeah.” He agreed, heart as light and buoyant as air. “About time.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this came from. I just wanted cliche, dramatic fix-it and this is what I regurgitated. Fuck you brain, why so sappy?


End file.
